Skip The Needle - Wake Up Wake Up Wake Up EP (2025)

Four soulful voices, one powerful message. Oakland-based queer female quartet Skip The Needle, now more than ten years into their career, are still on a mission to make it clear to the world that socially conscious music can edify, inspire and rejuvenate—no small message in these dark times. Katie Cash (guitar, vocals), Shelley Doty (guitar, vocals), Vicki Randle (bass, vocals) and Kofy Brown (drums, vocals) blend soul, funk and rock like no other, but it is their four amazing voices that truly enchant. On their new EP, with the telling title Wake Up Wake Up Wake Up, we hear five soulful songs with a groovy sound and socially conscious message: “Get up, stay up!”

Though playfulness and exuberance are an integral part of Skip The Needle’s performances, reflections on issues of justice and equity, especially black, queer and women’s rights are the driving force behind much of their collective writing. The songs on “Wake Up Wake Up Wake Up” reflect the idea that socially conscious music can edify, inspire and rejuvenate. Four distinctly different voices and musical styles coming together as one spawned the name Skip The Needle and their messages of hope and inspiration, delivered with driving, infectious funk, rock and soul.